Listing the more advanced jazz artists for your vanity / "street cred" is so counterproductive. Hopefully PrimusFan can come in with that story about John Coltrane not listening to John Coltrane to learn.

if you insist...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Branford Marsalis

Well, that’s what everybody was doing back then in the ’80s. You become a product of your environment. I was out there playing with Wynton’s band: I’m an R&B saxophone player, I have no ****in’ idea how to play jazz. Before that, I’m at Berklee and I’m listening to all of these guys playing all this fast stuff, and the question I had was, “If all of this shit is so good, then how come it doesn’t sound as good as the stuff from 30 years before?”

And since I couldn’t have that discussion with anyone, then I had to figure it out on my own, just asking questions, talking to Art Blakey, talking to Benny Golson, talking to Dizzy Gillespie. I would just say, “What did y’all listen to when you were growing up?” And one of the constants was, “Church music and rhythm and blues.” But the modern jazz guys of my generation basically did neither, with few exceptions. In Dizzy’s day, you had 15-year-old kids playing in church bands or playing in rhythm-and-blues bands or swing-based dance bands, which were groove bands. But in modern times you got 15-year-old kids learning “Giant Steps” at jazz camp. So I basically had to catch up to all of this stuff and learn. And it took a while.

I was trying to play like Coltrane in Blakey’s band, and one day Blakey walks by and says, “What the fuck are you doing?” I said, “I’m trying to play like Coltrane,” and he said, “No, you’re not!” And so I sarcastically said back to him, “Oh, so the best way to learn how to play like Coltrane is to not listen to Coltrane, right?” And he says, “Well, let me ask you this: When Coltrane was your age, what the fuck do you think he was listening to, tapes of himself in the future? You dumb motherfucker!” And he walked off. And he left me with it. And that’s the thing that was great about him. Whether it was because he was emotionally detached or because he just instinctively knew, who knows?

But the thing is, he understood—although he wouldn’t have said it this way—that regardless of the kind of profession you’re in, whether it’s sports or music or whether you make typewriters, it don’t matter. The two things that you have to develop on your own are cognition and intuition. Teachers have basically supplied the students with cognition. But in the manner in which they do it, intuition doesn’t bloom. So when Art Blakey dropped that turd on my head, he walked away and left me to sort that shit out. So an hour later I walked up to him and I said, “So when Coltrane was a kid, what was he listening to?” And he says, “Ah, that’s the question! Ask Benny Golson.” So I called Benny and Benny says, “Oh, yes, young man, you might find this very interesting. Who do you think was Coltrane’s first major influence?” And I said Charlie Parker. And he says, “That wasn’t it. It was Johnny Hodges.” I mean, who can put that together?

So then I had to hold my nose and start listening to Duke Ellington. Because, you know, I didn’t come here for his shit. But if these old ****ers say that this is what it is, then alright, I’ll have to endure this. So then, after about two or three weeks of listening to Duke records, suddenly you realize, “Man, these cats are amazing!” Because it reminded me of what I learned how to do on R&B gigs. There were a couple of club owners in New Orleans who said, “Man, you cats play too many fuckin’ notes. And if y’all won’t learn how to play this music the right way, we just won’t hire you.” That gets it home. Note to self: less notes! And once you start getting into the idea of what R&B really is, then it’s beautiful. But if your appreciation of music is always on the periphery of it, which means that your entire study of the music is totally based on harmonic analysis, then funk is a zero. You know, F7th for four minutes and 25 seconds is nothing, if your study of music is totally based on harmonic analysis. But if you can suspend that part of your brain and hear what they’re doing and what makes it effective, then James Brown is suddenly the genius that he is.

TS, while i advocate listening to the music chronologically, you just have to listen to a bunch of different stuff til something strikes you and you get the jazz bug. one album i particularly remember being big for me was this one:

it's pretty accessible if you're coming from conventional pop music. people give vocal jazz a lot of crap because they think it's cool to. the difference between good jazz and great jazz is how vocal the players are in their phrasing, inflections, etc. also check out this wonderful ballads album:

i realize the irony since we were just saying don't try to be coltrane right off the bat. but stuff like this and the first miles quintet are cool by me for someone trying to get the hang of jazz. we're mainly saying don't dive straight into "giant steps" and "a love supreme." in my opinion workin' with the miles davis quintet might be the quintessential jazz album:

but then again, the quintessential player might have been louis armstrong. it's really timeless. some of it sounds old and hokey. but once you get past that, most of the stuff he plays is still really hip. i play licks all the time and then realize "oh, that's from this louis armstrong solo."

If you want to hear some straight-ahead stuff, check out John Lewis and his work with the modern jazz quartet.

Horace Silver is the shit as well.

or Sonny Rollins

Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers are an excellently accessible and colourful introduction to jazz, and their tunes translate surprisingly well onto guitar:

Anyway, I'd recommend you check out hard bop. It's a synthesis of all that I love about american music, with roots in blues, swing, gospel, and borrows elements of funk and so on. It's capable of being catchy and virtuosic at the same time, while not being as alienating as bebop can sometimes be.